My new laptop's harddrive makes this faint crackling noise. Should I be worried?

Question

Whenever my laptop loads something, I can hear a very faint but rather annoying crackling noise coming from the hard drive (ignore the background hiss and ticking clock):

Heres what it sounds like: http://goo.gl/LQ2X5T

My laptop is an ASUS X550 (intel i7) and is relatively new i.e. 3 months old.

Is this normal? Or should I be worried? :S

Thanks.

Solution

Listen to another one (demo in store maybe) and see if it sounds the same?

If the other one is the same, that's the way they are, apparently. Almost every hard drive makes a little bit of noise when reading / writing, especially if it jumps around for lots of quick "random" reads/writes. Some more than others.

If the other one sounds different (quiet) and doesn't make the weird noise, you might want to return/exchange it (though 3 months is probably too old to just return it outright).

And check for any junk stuck in the cooling fan or vents that could be making noise too. If you're not positive if the sound is coming from the hard drive, you could unplug the hard drive and see if the laptop still makes the noise (many laptops have the HD somewhere "easily" accessible).

ps. I couldn't hear anything "crackling" in the sound clip, maybe it wouldn't play loud enough here but only heard hiss &/or fan sound.

And if you sent in the laptop to the manufacturer for repair, I've read that they can replace parts (or even the whole laptop) with used / refurbished parts, so they may not have sent back a brand new hard drive, maybe even the same hard drive if they thought it was still "ok," so I wouldn't be too worried if they sent it back as-is.

Comments

[Ramhound]

I have never found a defective HDD to be quiet.

[Xen2050]

the other "good" one I mean... But I did have a defective hard drive that was completely silent. Didn't spin at all

[Ramhound]

I think my point was that a quiet drive is a good sign.